Anne Perry, teen murderer turned crime writer, dies at 84

Anne Perry, a prolific British crime writer with a murderous past that was brought to light in Peter Jackson’s 1994 film “Heavenly Creatures,” has died. She was 84.

Perry died in a Los Angeles hospital on Monday, her literary agent, Meg Davis, told the New York Times on Wednesday. “Ms. Perry’s health had declined since she had a heart attack in December,” Davis said.

Perry’s 1979 debut novel, “The Cater Street Hangman,” and her 1993 historical mystery, “A Sudden, Fearful Death,” are among the author’s numerous period thrillers. But for nearly two decades of her soaring literary career, no one knew that the crime writer “Anne Perry” was actually the teenage murderer Juliet Hulme.

At 15, Perry served five years in prison for her part in bludgeoning to death Honorah Mary Parker, her best friend Pauline Parker’s mother, in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1954. The two plotted her murder, using a brick stuffed inside a stocking, and wrote of the details and “anticipation” in journals found by the police.

“Why can’t I be judged for who I am now, not what I was then?” Perry asked in a 2003 interview with the Guardian. “I had to give up my past — the hardest thing imaginable — and begin life in my new identity as Anne Perry, knowing even a tiny slip could unravel everything.”

Perry’s books grapple with murky morals, themes of sin and repentance. “It is vital for me to go on exploring moral matters,” she said.

Perry was a regular on the New York Times bestseller list, and her 100-plus mysteries and thrillers have garnered critical acclaim, selling more than 26 million copies worldwide. She won an Edgar Award in 2000, and the Times of London named her one of the “100 Masters of Crime.”